there is possibly no genre of narrative game I love more than anything that captures the beautiful, fleeting, meaningful, quirky, and chaotic portrait of communities that form in online spaces, often in spite of the businesses that created them

and for that portion of this game, I was in love. the characters, the communities, the bonds, and the style of its presentation was so cool. I would play 100 games in this format and feel refreshed by the experience, every time. I miss my friends from a long list of these communities, even if I can't remember their usernames and avatars. this captured that so well

but though I respect its intentions, I felt like the primary plot of this game was weak. without getting into spoilers, if you want to talk about a Topic, it is almost always better to center its related character as the subject, and not the object. and the glimpses we got of the object character here were so tropey, so common in a gendered way, that it was equal parts frustrating and hard to take seriously. I could go into greater detail, but I won't both because of spoilers and also because that doesn't feel great, as it's an otherwise lovely indie game with its heart in the right place

A visual novel that follows a teenage girl and her mother on an adventure to discover their family's secrets after the passing of the grandmother. The story is told via the items and letters that you, Tess, pick up and discuss with your mother, Opal. It's a funny story of growth and understanding between a daughter and her mother.

The game looks really nice and the VA work from Keri Russell and Kaitlyn Dever was well done and made connecting to the family easy. The 2002 set piece reminded me a lot of my childhood homes as I recognized items that I would see in my own home or my family's growing up.

There are issues where the controls (Series X) would get jammed when looking around, or even jerk my view in a direction I wasn't moving to but overall the walking and interaction selections worked fine.

There is some replayability with the dialogue options you can choose from, but the full story can be told in one sitting. I gained all achievements as well.

It's worth playing once for the story. Annapurna makes some of my favorite titles.

Really liked this. A well made game about browsing an early 2000s gaming forum that’s close to being shut down, getting to know the users there through their posts and talking with them over DMs while trying to make the community a better place. Primarily though it’s focused on a user named Vivi, an artist you gradually get to know and bond with as the game progresses

The presentation and writing really does a great job making the Shark console and Videoverse feel convincing, and the focus on how positively affecting these awkward but sincere online friendships can be was sweet

At first glance, I thought this was more or less budget Hypnospace Outlaw, with the old internet/Geocities inspiration replaced by some amalgamation of Miiverse, Swapnote, and MSN Messenger. That wouldn't be giving enough credit to Videoverse however; instead of focusing on the mystique of the deep web, Videoverse tackles the intricacies of navigating a dying social network tied to increasingly redundant technology and highlights the relationships within. The game forgoes Hypnospace Outlaw's discovery puzzles, and cuts right to the core of interacting with the community itself, instinctively conveying the fragility of maintaining such relationships. You're constantly scouring the same forums over and over for new comments and any changes, trying to decipher exactly what this particular user meant with just one sentence while playing the simulations in your head about how particular responses (or not responding at all) could make their day a little bit better or potentially upset another member due to unintended consequences.

It's a surprisingly gripping experience despite its limitations: sometimes there are certain responses that the game forbids you from picking because you're not "lawful/cocky" enough even if the responses feel more blunt than out of character, and browsing the same posts repeatedly can feel a bit plodding when the trigger to proceed requires you to leave more comments but the system itself can only mark whether a post is left read/unread. Despite that, the payoff makes the occasional tedium worthwhile; marking down "top posts" in a notebook lets you reiterate those statements to others later on, and the game really comes together when you're using small tidbits of wisdom to brighten an online friend's day. If you're looking for an cathartic blast to the past that depicts the ephemerality of online spaces while thoughtfully forcing players to confront the ambiguity of the interactions stemming within, then Videoverse may be just what you're looking for.